The purpose of this work is to study the structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules and membranes by means of laser Raman spectroscopy. Classical Raman spectroscopy is used for the determination of the secondary structural order and dynamics of lipid bilayers, polypeptides, proteins and nucleic acids; from changes in the frequency and intensity of conformationally sensitive chain modes the average secondary structure is determined. Resonance Raman spectroscopy is used to study reaction intermediates in enzyme-substrate reactions and probe the excited states of purines and pyrimidine nucleotides.